Need some basic ideas on how to refinish some stairs

We have a house built in 1948 that has some stairs leading to a daylight basement. I would call these better than utility stairs but it's by no means a grand staircase (it's a single straight flight with walls on both sides, maybe 40-48" wide). They were originally softwood (I'm assuming old growth fir) with vinyl treads and they we covered in carpeting. I would like to either replace with solid oak or laminate but I'm open to other ideas.

I took a quick look at Home Depot, apparently they have stair "bull nose" trim they can order for laminate flooring. I'm concerned about how to rip-cut the panels and make it all come out nice and tight with laminate flooring, I'm assuming I would need to buy or rent a nice table saw?

Just looking for some basic ideas/pointers on what might be the overall most economical and aesthetic.

I would not use laminate as stair treads. HD has both oak and yellow pine bull nose treads. I installed 17 treads and risers today plus a landing for a client today. They chose oak treads stained red oak, with poplar risers painted white. It looks good, but, being a practical person, I would have probably opted for the yellow pine, since each oak tread was $25, and poplar 1x8 was $2.47 per lf. $550 in wood.